This invention relates to reducing energy costs (in conjunction with time-of-use pricing with rates that vary according to energy costs) and has particular application to home control and building control in general and is useful in areas supplied by electric utilities that wish to engage in demand side management of their area.
As it becomes more expensive for electricity providers to increase generation, distribution and transmission capacity, a number of strategies for coping with increasing electrical demand have emerged. One of these is called demand side management in which the users of electricity themselves are adapted to reduce the amount of electricity they use during times of peak power usage as well as in other similar situations. The invention herein provides a way to adapt users of electricity to reduce their demand responsive both to predetermined rate information established periodically by the local utility and to real time changes in rates. Thus by communicating the (time-of-use) energy price rate to a control system within the customer""s premises, the control system can reduce the energy consumption within the premise during times when the cost of energy is high. The utility can reduce the necessary generating capacity for a given area, and the users of that power can reduce their cost of buying it at the same time.
Previous ways to deal with related problems of reducing energy consumption in buildings in general are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,510,398; 4,916,328 and 4,909,041. Nevertheless there is no reason why this invention could not be used in non-residential buildings or even in industrial processes that consume electric power.